No Mo Trash

So I have this new friend, a soccer mom, Monzie, a gorgeous woman from south Texas, who's been behind the scenes helping us with Christmas. Her organization yesterday gave us an artificial Christmas tree that they've used for years, thus fulfilling several criteria for me: used, free, and now I won't participate in the cutting down of an innocent, unsuspecting tree for an over-commercialized two week mayhem. I prefer a live tree, of course, and feel that both situations are environmentally precarious, but I'm strangely at peace with having this fake tree in the family room surrounded by several hundred real houseplants. It's obviously very well made.

I'd gone to several folks, who I usually run to for counsel, receiving an enthusiastic 100% positive response for fixing to do a difficult thing - a Sophie's Choice in reality - but with zero options to keep my family safe otherwise. I still have one more person I need to talk to about this.

At the courthouse I ran into both a judge and a sheriff's office investigator, both having the same question, "What're you doing down here?" and as I explained, since they've both been drawn into the sometimes violently negative machinations of my family over the years, they also agreed that I had no choice.

I broke my own heart there.

It's not a done deal. I have a big pow wow about it on Monday. I cried in my truck, frustrated at the system that penalizes families and children, rather than helping them with obvious mental health needs. I have no answers though.

Stopping in town to pick up some sacks of leaves, tucking them around our new/used Christmas tree I'd picked up, when I got home I discovered one sack was full of magnolia blossoms stubs, thus blessing my hens who love to kick and scratch through the stuff I bring home. Weirdly, I love to make them happy. They're uncomplicated, easy to please, and they don't act out.

I'm one of the folks who doesn't enjoy Christmas music, it pressures me as well, so I don't listen to either 88.9 or 104.7 until after New Year's Day, plugged into my Ipod, listening to Dave Ramsey hoot that his show is a National Top Five show nowadays. Yep, folks should've listened to him long ago, maybe the country wouldn't be in the fix we're in now.

I'd not been sucked in in to my 8th grade boys requests to drive them to town on a Friday night and drop them at the movies with some hoochy girls. Duh. They did request to go to their middle school basketball game where I know all the chaperones. "Yeah, guys, that's way more appropriate," I'd informed them, only to be greeted with rolling eyes towards their stone age mama and her antiquated ideals.

OK y'all I've seen the Facebook pages of those skanky girls...ain't gonna happen on my watch.

We're in a weird cold spell, my Big Back Garden has not yet had a frost, peppers still growing, canna lilies in great shape, but there's a chance of snow flurries today, and a Christmas Parade that the kids are chomping to get to this morning.

I'd, of course, rather go haul manure, but I've been outvoted bigtime. So I'll stand there bored outta my skull, smiling at folks I know, looking at my watch, and waiting for the interminable line of tractors, horses, floats and trucks to pull past me so that I can get back home and tend to everything. Good chance of rain too to further drench my lack of enthusiasm.

My older boys watched Food Inc last night, now out on video, Blockbusters only ordered five copies versus the hundreds of copies they buy for R rated hogwash that flies off the shelves, while folks stuff themselves with non-food crap that will never support life. Eating bananas (although we're not above the occasional junk food at all) the boys absorbed it all, looking at me with wide eyes...yeah boy, now there's a scary story for ya. That one sad white hen they show in the movie, that's too over-fed with additives to even support its own weight? Maybe I'll make my own hens watch it this afternoon, sitting in our laps, let 'em know how good they have it out here with us.

I have a split personality, re-connecting with old friends on Facebook who do not even know I have a bunch of kids. My old friends are mainly from Virginia, a state I'd left 33 years ago to return to Georgia, my birthplace. I'd really dropped out of contact with so many, so weighed down under the demands of a career and a large family. Nowadays with Tabby being the youngest, and quite independent, I don't have to dress anyone anymore - no car seats, no life jackets, no bathing anyone - my load is infinitely lighter now, no one home with me during the school day, and I'm loving the freedom, loving finding my old friends once again, but totally shocked at how fast 30 or 40 years have flown by.

And my oldest kid? Now 36, Sarah totally dumped her trash pick-up option, as she recycles or composts almost everything, careful as to what she purchases in the first place- I'm really jealous, and very proud, of this aspect of her life.